How Brioni became the Italian menswear label everyone is raving about

Gangster vibes

Fashion collabs are often gimmicks, but every once in a while they signal tectonic shifts, like in the recent case of Roman tailoring label Brioni’s campaign with Metallica. The storied luxury menswear house, whose suits start at about $5,000 off the rack, built its reputation dressing vintage Hollywood stars like Cary Grant as well as heads of state like Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan – but the rarefied old-world cachet was wearing thin. The brand needed a serious reboot and a darker edge.

Enter new creative director Justin O’Shea – a bearded, tatted-to-his-knuckles, Aussie biker dude, who used to work at a bauxite mine in Nhulunbuy, in the Northern Territory. O’Shea, 37, has no formal training in design, but that’s the point. His credentials include having served as the global fashion director of Munich-based e-commerce site MyTheresa, where he mastered the art of fashion retailing, and his instinctive understanding of how to harness the power of imagery: he has a juicy Instagram account and is a bona fide street style god – with the capacity to send the paparazzi into a tizzy. And when O’Shea wears a suit (which is almost always), he looks modern, cool, masculine and powerful.

At his first show in July, O’Shea presented a new Brioni silhouette that included a single-button jacket with broader shoulders, silk shirts and ties with thick double Windsor knots – an unabashedly gangster vibe. He’s even refreshed the brand’s logo, abandoning its whimsical feel for a more powerful, modern Gothic font – an update on the brand’s original logo that was used during its heyday. O’Shea’s pitch is to the brand’s traditional clientele, who don’t want to look avuncular, as well as a swelling tribe of young, cocksure gentlemen with deep pockets – rockers, footballers, tycoons – who aren’t drawn to the waifish or preppy aesthetic of other labels but still want to make a statement.